A Study On Ezra Pound’s Translation Of Chinese Classical Poetry From The Perspective Of Translation Ethics

Translation is a complex activity involving various factors, such as inter-lingualtransformation, culture exchange, cultural conflict, interpersonal relationship, etc,which requires the translator to make proper moral decisions to appropriately copewith the linguistic and cultural status of different nations. Ethics, as a branch ofphilosophy, mainly focuses on the moral conventions and norms involved ininterpersonal communications of human beings. Thus, translation is in fact an ethicalactivity, needing ethics to be its theoretical guidance.The traditional translation theories generally make explorations on translationfrom the perspective of “fidelity”,“smoothness”, etc. Fidelity is in nature an ethicalconcept. With the arrival of Culture Turn in1970s, scholars began to question theethics of fidelity, for absolute fidelity is ideal and will never be achieved from acultural perspective. For this reason, ethics of fidelity was gradually marginalized. Upto2001, Anthony Pym’s The Return to Ethics led scholars to reconsider the necessityof the return of translation ethics.In translating Chinese classical poetry, Pound mainly adheres to the thoughts ofcreative translation and foreignizing translation, which arouses extensive doubtsamong scholars. Through researches by the author, it is found that Pound’s above twotranslation thoughts can be reasonably explained under the principle of translationethics.This thesis attempts to make researches on Pound’s translation about Chineseclassical poetry from the perspective of ethics of fidelity and ethics of difference.Although ethics of fidelity experienced submergence, it was not totally abandoned.Scholars discarded the previous absolute fidelity, performing analysis on ethics offidelity in different forms at a higher level. So this thesis will analyze Pound’s creativetranslation thought under the guidance of ethics of fidelity. In addition, Venuti’s ethicsof difference can be interpreted as an ethical principle for foreignization. In this regard,this thesis tries to carry out researches on Pound’s foreignizing translation under theprinciple of Venuti’s ethics of difference. It is concluded through the author’s deepanalysis that Pound’s creative and foreignizing translation does not disobey translationprinciples, and should be deemed acceptable and feasible.This thesis not only proves the feasibility of Pound’s translation of Chinese classical poetry on the basis of translation ethics, but also expects to make its owncontribution to equal and harmonious culture exchanges. Moreover, only a fewscholars make researches on translation ethics, and most of the researches are confinedto theoretical level. And those who take translation ethics as theoretic basis to studyPound’s translation of Chinese classical poetry are much fewer. Therefore, this thesisalso helps enrich the theories in the field of translation ethics to some extent andprovide certain instructions for poetry translation practices.